Peter Shumlin: Look to states for progressive action

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has some news for Democrats: The federal government isn’t everything.

As Democrats watch their national agenda stall in a divided Congress, the new chairman of the Democratic Governors Association is seeking to focus the party’s attention on leadership opportunities outside Washington. It’s no easy task at a moment when Democrats control the White House and the Senate — and when most Democratic governors tend to draw attention as surrogates for President Barack Obama, or not at all.

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But the case for leading from the states comes naturally to Shumlin, who has pursued a dizzying agenda in Vermont, stocked with big ticket Democratic priorities that wouldn’t stand a chance on Capitol Hill. His national sales pitch is a variation on an argument Republicans have made since 2008, when Obama’s first election prompted the GOP to turn outside Washington for leadership.

In Shumlin’s version, the conservative House of Representatives is the villain. He told a DGA event in downtown Washington last month that thanks to a dysfunctional Congress, the real action these days is in the states.

“While the tea party Congress fumbles the ball, our Democratic governors are getting the jobs job done,” Shumlin told supporters at the event the weekend before Obama’s second Inauguration. “We’ve got to run candidates who can get the tough work done while the Congress that drank too much tea stalls and paralyzes America.”

For Shumlin, 56, talking up state-based solutions is more than a chore of the DGA chairmanship. During a period of Democratic ascendancy on the federal level, few Democratic officials have argued as enthusiastically as Shumlin for progressive innovation in the states.

If Republican celebrity-governors such as Chris Christie and Scott Walker have largely dominated coverage outside the Beltway with headline-grabbing rhetoric and proposals, Shumlin has pursued an agenda no less ambitious in his own state.

Shumlin has put Vermont on the path toward a single-payer health care system, setting up a robust insurance exchange called Green Mountain Care and pledging to unveil — at a later date — funding mechanisms for universal, government-backed care. He has trumpeted the cause of gay marriage and pushed for immigration and child care reforms that would stand little chance on the national level.

The governor has pushed for what looks like a wish list of national liberal goals, only some of them related to jobs: He has expanded broadband Internet access, banned hydraulic fracking and opposed the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. In the current legislative session, he is arguing for issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented agricultural workers, decriminalizing marijuana and legalizing physician-assisted suicide.

Shumlin resists any suggestion that he’s trying to make Vermont a model for national policy — “To be honest with you, I don’t really see myself as a national advocate,” he says — but he grows animated talking about the opportunity for achievement outside the basket case that is Washington.

“We’ve got a Congress that we all know isn’t producing anything,” Shumlin said in an interview with POLITICO. “Governors are more important than ever, I would argue. … We have an opportunity, in spite of the paralysis in Congress, to create jobs and create prosperity for those who have jobs.”